Report about day 1 and 2

Yesterday evening we met the other teams from all over Europe for the first time during the opening ceremony and the social dinner. Afterwards, we finished our work on the parachute and created the 5 minute-presentation for today.

Today we drove at 8:00 am to the airfield Rotenburg Wümme for the technical inspection of the CanSats, the drop test, and the short presentation.

view of the runway

After we held our presentation, we passed the technical inspection and the drop test. At the drop test our CanSat was dropped off by a drone at a height of 50 meter. It was required that the parachute would not slow down the fall too much. A maximum fall time of 7 seconds was allowed for. Our drop took 6 seconds, so we have permission to fly tomorrow! Our CanSat also survived the drop-test unscathed, only the batteries moved slightly.

The certificate of the technical inspection and the drop-test

RIP CanSat No. 2

Today we made a routine inspection and found a hardware fault at the Pi 3 from our second CanSat. We assume that a part of a chip of the camera interface was broken off.

here we circled the broken element

So we will only be able to use our first CanSat at the competition. Now we plan to use the second CanSat as a dummy during the competition. 

A dummy for our CanSat

Today we finished our dummy required for the drop test. This test is part of the inspection that our CanSat has to go through on the 2 launch day.

here the sideview

The drop test is made to check whether our CanSats meet the specified sink rate. For this test it is important that the dimensions and the weight, as well as the parachute fastening, are exactly the same.
Therefore the satellite will be brought to a height of 50 m by a drone and from there it will be dropped.
Our sink rate should be around 8 m/s (for the competition is a sink rate between 8 m/s  and 11 m/s recommend) sothat we should take good pictures.

Closing competition

The "hot phase" of competition is getting closer and closer. Wednesday is the day when we will get to know the other teams personally, and already on Friday our satellites will start if they pass the inspection on the day before.

The latest preparations are currently under way. Both CanSats are ready to go and meet the guidelines of the competition. The radio path is also stable and the ground station has been programmed.

We will always keep you up-to-date with daily reports. So it is worthwhile to visit our blog more often.

And of course we wish all teams a good flight and nice days!

Revision of the additional weight

Today we optimized our lead plates being used as additional weight. We added recesses for the cables.

first version of the lead plate...

and here the second version of the lead plate

Now it is easier to insert the CanSat into the outer casing. Now the plates weigh 8 g less (~82g).

Brief report about our four radio tests:

We have done four radio tests. Our communication works via WiFi and therefore we need a WiFi adapter for the ground station. The CanSat has an already integrated WiFi module.

The results we got from these tests were interestingly varied.

Finished outer casings

Today we finished our work on the outer casings. It should protect our CanSat against rain and other meterological effects and of course it should give the CanSat a cool look.
In all we made three outer casings, so we should be prepared if one of them fails.

Interested in how those were manufactured?

Twins

Today we finished our work on the second CanSat. It is a replica of the first one. This means we now have a replacement should one of the CanSats not work.

Additional weight for our CanSat

The guidelines require the CanSat to weigh between 300 and 350 grams. Because our CanSat only weighs 220 grams we needed to add at least additional 80 grams of extra weight to reach the minium weight.

We choose to use lead as extra weight again because of its high density and softness, but this time, instead of strapping strips of lead to the batteries with cable ties we choose to melt the lead in the same form our circuit boards are.

By doing so we are able to simply bolt the lead plate onto our CanSat like our circuit boards. The plate will be fixed to the bottom part of our CanSat in order to help stabilize the fall so our CanSat can take some steadier pictures.

mold drying

the materials we used

Further progress of our work on the CanSat

Till now we managed to produce a new and a much better version of our CanSat. And this is how it now looks like: